Games determined by their last move

Originally posted by heinzkat
The writing of the fens took more time than solving it. But what kind of program did you write?

It looks at every possible sequence of moves of the given length and records the last one. Then it goes through every possible chess move and prints out the ones that were recorded exactly once. Pure brute force; a smarter algorithm should go much faster.

Originally posted by heinzkat
The writing of the fens took more time than solving it. But what kind of program did you write?

Get Winboard, play out the moves on it, then File -> Copy position to clipboard. Never type a FEN again!

http://www.tim-mann.org/xboard.html

Certainly the most difficult one:

1. g4 h5
2. Bg2 hxg4
3. Bxb7 Rxh2
4. Nh3 Bxb7
5. O-O Rh1#

Originally posted by GregM
It looks at every possible sequence of moves of the given length and records the last one. Then it goes through every possible chess move and prints out the ones that were recorded exactly once. Pure brute force; a smarter algorithm should go much faster.

How does your program determine what chess moves are possible? Must have been quite some work to write that all out.

Originally posted by heinzkat
How does your program determine what chess moves are possible? Must have been quite some work to write that all out.

I just borrowed code from a chess engine I wrote a while ago; a few lines inserted into a testing routine gave the moves I posted.

Seems this has been done before:

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~flab/chess/problems-moves.html

Ah, yes. But who can recall the game that was played some years ago in the U.S.?

1. d4 ... Black Resigns!

Who were the players? What was the occasion?

Dinosaur

Originally posted by dinosaurus
Ah, yes. But who can recall the game that was played some years ago in the U.S.?

1. d4 ... Black Resigns!

Who were the players? What was the occasion?

Dinosaur

There is this one game by R.J. Fischer that ended after 1. c4 (1-0). I don't exactly know the whereabouts about that... neither do I recall a 1. d4 'win'.

I'll give folks a few days and then I'll give the answer if noone gets it first.

Well, shortly after Garry Kasparov won the World Championship, he was invited on the David Letterman show. The World Champion could not attend in person, but agreed to appear by phone. David Letterman set up a chess set on his desk and taped Kasparov's face to the top of the White king, and his own face on top of the Black king. He called Kasparov and after a brief chat invited him to make his opening move. I don't know if he said "Pawn to Queen Four" or "d4" or what, but this was his opening move. Mr. Letterman nodded as if he approved of the choice of openings and then began to concentrate on the board. After some ten seconds, he began to lean over and focus more intently on the board. After another pause he began to reach out as if to make his reply. But quickly pulling his hand away, he appeared to see the trap the World Champion had set for him so he looked further. After another thirty seconds and some shifting in his seat, he saw that Kasparov had him completly busted, so he resigned. He was a good loser though and led the audience in a long ovation for the World Champion.

The official Game score would be:

GM Kasparov v. D. Letterman
1. d4!
Black resigns! 1-0